In 2009, Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively led an Exodus International board member and a representative of former PFOX president Richard Cohen’s International Healing Foundation to support an antigay conference which launched a campaign for antigay genocide and torture in Uganda.
While that initial campaign was dampened under international pressure, Uganda is now considering a new bill to execute HIV-positive gay Ugandans — and the original bill to execute all LGBT Ugandans remains under consideration.
Seeing a new opportunity for influence and fund-raising, Lively is jumping to the forefront of efforts to rejuvenate Uganda’s war against its own citizenry. This year, Lively is posturing as a moderate who merely favors the torture of gay Ugandans in “ex-gay” prison camps until they pretend to change their orientation.
Lively told Edward Ssekandi, the speaker of Uganda’s parliament, in a March 2010 letter that antigay torture is more palatable to the international community than an all-out death penalty.
Conversely, if the “death penalty” provision were removed, it would take the wind out of the sails of their current campaign against the bill. With so much of the international opposition rooted in the idea that this is a “Kill the Gays” law, the removal of this provision would represent enough of a concession on your part that a great many of the people who are now siding with the homosexual movement out of sympathy would consider the matter resolved. The “gay” activists and their political allies will, of course, continue to attack the bill, but from a much weaker position.Ôªø
Lively also reasons that homosexuals enjoy much less public sympathy when they aren’t threatened with death.
Lively shifts support toward Uganda’s existing penalty of lifelong detention, amended to include “ex-gay” re-education — along with punishment for relatives, friends, or doctors who don’t report gay people (regardless of their own age) who have sex with anyone aged 18-24. Lively contends that he is protecting LGBT Ugandans under age 25 by prohibiting anyone of similar age and orientation from “recruiting” them. And he imagines himself to be establishing God’s kingdom on Earth by involuntarily deputizing Uganda’s families and doctors — forcibly turning them into government censors and bedroom police.
Ugandan officials and media continue to point to Exodus International and NARTH for support, and both of these organizations continue to refuse to officially condemn forced “therapy” and imprisonment on their main web sites. Individual members of these groups have informally expressed opposition, but not in a manner that would decisively undermine Uganda’s use of their pseudoscience and propaganda.
According to Box Turtle Bulletin, Uganda member of parliament Charles Tuhaise received a copy of Lively’s letter to Ssekandi. Tuhaise rejected Lively’s advocacy of torture and bedroom police as too moderate and insidious in their outcome, but praised Lively for having “stood up to homosexual intimidation for so long as a lone voice.”
Hat tip: Warren Throckmorton
